The Platinum - 247 West 46th St @ Eighth Ave - Condo - by Costas Kondylis

[londonlawyer]

The September 1, 2005 edition of The New York Times reports that the building housing McCale's Pub on the northeast corner of 46th and 8th likleywill be razed and a residential tower will rise on the site (including the adjacent parking lot).

It's a shame to some degree because it's a nice old building that has all of its ornamentation in tact. With all of the crap on 8th, there are many more sites that warrant demolition ASAP.

[sfenn1117]

Here comes another boring 40 story residential. I don't know the building you're talking about but it seems like I'd rather have a neighborhood pub than another Staples or Starbucks on the ground floor.

[londonlawyer]

It's a building that's painted a light burgundy color and has all of its moldings and ornamentation. It will be nice to lose the parking lot, but this was a decent building. I would love to let loose with a wrecking ball with the bulk of 8th Ave., but this is one of the buildings I would have saved.

[krulltime]

Can't remeber seeing that pub... but restaurant row is along 46th between 8th and 9th.

My favorite expensive restaurant there is 'ORSO'... Yummy!

[lofter1]

Only one word if McHale's goes:

BUMMER

This is one of the great joints in Times Square. No BS. Great Burgers. Great Beer. Great Neon.

SAVE McHALE'S



more pics:

http://www.lightningfield.com/2004/1...manhattan.html

[lofter1]

Building's Sale Threatens Times Sq. Tavern
By JENNIFER 8. LEE
Published: September 1, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/nyregion/01bar.html

Over the decades, McHale's bar, at 46th Street and Eighth Avenue, has been something of a shared secret.

Diane Bondareff for The New York Times

The rumors began lazily drifting about in the August heat. Customers wandered into McHale's pub near Times Square, surprised. "We heard you guys were closed," they exclaimed.

One patron called because he had seen a posting on the Internet that said McHale's was closed. The waitress who answered said, on the contrary, the bar was still very much open.

Jimmy McHale, whose family has owned the bar for more than 50 years, heard the rumors through members of his softball team who work in the theater industry.

Then, a few weeks ago, workmen showed up in front of the bar, on the corner of West 46th Street and Eighth Avenue, and started taking measurements. "They were digging to see how far they could go down to see how far they could go up," said Mr. McHale, 48, who added that he has heard that condominiums are planned.

The building was sold in February, according to city records, and earlier this month Mr. McHale received a 30-day notice to vacate. His lawyer told him not to take it too seriously, he said. He has no formal lease, just "a handshake type of thing," he said. For now, at least, the fate of McHale's, which has aged into a Times Square icon over the last half century, is a mystery. The new owners, the 46th Street Development Corporation of Parsippany, N.J., which also owns the adjoining property, did not return telephone calls yesterday seeking comment on plans for the McHale's building.

The Department of City Planning, which approves development plans, said yesterday that no paperwork had been filed for the lot that includes McHale's.

Mr. McHale said he was unaware that the building had even been sold, because he is still paying rent to the same landlord he has had for years. An employee of the former landlord, G & C Realty Corporation, said the company was simply collecting money for the new one. McHale's is the type of establishment that chains like TGI Friday's and Bennigan's try to emulate. But authentically aged charm is hard to reproduce from corporate headquarters.

In a city of $15 cosmopolitans, McHale's sells $4 pints of beer and Ketel One and tonic for $4.50. The burgers are so thick that they crumble under their own weight.

With its darkened windows and aging neon lights, the restaurant is invisible to all except those who already know it, a shared secret for the stagehands, neighborhood regulars and the khaki-clad types who work at Viacom and Morgan Stanley in Times Square. Its intimacy embraces newcomers, taking some by surprise. "I walked in the other day, and they're like, 'Hey, Brian, what do you want?' and I'm like, 'What? You know my name?' " said Brian Silverman, 29, a guitarist on "Movin' Out," playing across the street.

The pub is an oasis that has so far escaped the sweep of Times Square development. "Times Square should change with the times, but I think it's become too commercial and too Disney World," said Tyler Miller, 32, a messenger who has been coming to McHale's for six years. "It's nice to have something from the past."

The bar still has some original windows from the days when it was called the Gaiety Cafe. The wooden bar is from the 1939 World's Fair. The blinds were installed for an American Express commercial with Jerry Seinfeld that was shot two years ago.

Mr. McHale, whose father bought the business in 1953, shrugs. He has a fatalist's view on change. "Things you have no control over, you can't be beat up with," he said. "You wouldn't be a happy person."

The bar is very much a part of his identity. "For me, this is my living room," said Mr. McHale, who lives on West 45th Street in the same apartment he grew up in (rent controlled, of course).

In the meantime, no one knows exactly what will happen when. "We're all in limbo," said Michelle Scarpa, 30, who has worked at McHale's for six years. "There is enough luck and guardian angels around this place that it will last a lot longer than anyone thinks."

[lofter1]

More shots of McHales: http://whatisee.org/mt/archives/entries/000826.html

And info at Curbed: http://www.curbed.com/archives/2005/...the_street.php

[kliq6]

Good Times at that place lofter for sure, been there alot

[lofter1]

Can't Get a Beer Anymore,
but Soon You Can Get a Condo


Richard Perry/The New York Times
Jimmy McHale plans to lock up McHale's for good Sunday.
His family has owned the bar, on West 46th Street in Midtown, since 1953.
The building was bought last winter by the 46th Street Development Corporation.

By ALAN FEUER
New York Times
January 22, 2006
Midtown Journal

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/22/ny...22mchales.html


Jimmy McHale stood there with his arms crossed. He frowned. Everything was gone.

His stools were gone, his tables were gone, his beer tap gone. In the place where his long oak bar once stood, a patch of sunlight rested on the floor.
"Once you get the altar out, the church seems kind of empty, doesn't it?" he asked. "Yep, we took the soul out of the place."

The end has finally come for McHale's, the beer and burger spot at West 46th Street and Eighth Avenue in Midtown, which Mr. McHale and his family have owned since 1953.


Richard Perry/The New York Times

For more than half a century, its neon sign was a beacon to the barflies of the Great White Way, but after a final curtain call on Monday night, it was time to strike the set.

A crew of stagehands from Local 1 of the theatrical workers' union descended on the place last week to haul out the air-conditioners and pry the dusty moldings off the walls.

Then, as if it were a yard sale, the place went out the door.

"Everybody, take a little piece," said Theresa Malamud, Mr. McHale's first cousin on his mother's side. "You want a booth, take a booth. You want a table, take a table."

In the dusty darkness, a half-dozen regulars stood considering the junk.

The place was a wreck - an ignominious end for an establishment that James McHale Sr. bought after serving in World War II, when it was still known as the Gaiety Cafe. The elder Mr. McHale went on to suffer through the 1970's and 80's, when Times Square was a low-rent district of cardsharps and cutthroats, and it was tough to draw a crowd.

"Mom and Dad did all the hard work," said Jimmy Jr., 49, who claims to have first set foot in the bar when he was 3 days old.

"When people went to Broadway shows back then, they ran to their cars."
Now the times have changed, and Midtown is fertile ground. Bars are dying off - J. R.'s, on 46th Street, in July; Barrymore's, on 45th, later this month - and the real-estate concerns are moving in.

Mr. McHale's building was bought last winter by a company called the 46th Street Development Corporation, which plans to build a condominium, he said.

There was no response to phone calls made on Friday to the company's office in Parsippany, N.J., to inquire about its plans.

Nonetheless, the news sent chills through the drinking class of Broadway.
"We're running out joints - they all keep closing," said Willie Walters, a union stagehand who was helping disassemble McHale's the other day.

At Barrymore's, the sense of despair was much the same.

"There's always Joe Allen's and Angus McIndoe's," said Bill McCauley, an actor in for a midday sniff.

McHale's provided an old-time drinking experience in an ever-modernizing neighborhood. There was the old dark wood interior, the hockey and baseball memorabilia, the buzz and glow of neon and some of the biggest burgers in the city, made by Italo Huaringa, the Peruvian cook who worked in a warrenlike basement there for 35 years.

Mr. McHale still hopes to revive the place and is scouting out locations. He has put the bar in storage in New Jersey and allowed his friends and relatives to take home certain items on a temporary loan.

His cousin-in-law, Marc Malamud, walked off with an air-conditioning unit and a few unopened bottles (not to be returned). Charlie Redmond, a bellman at the Edison Hotel, took home a window and the ice-skate sharpener the cooks employ to hone their blades.

John Wright, a regular, was still considering his choice of souvenir. Mr. Wright is a lank, cadaverous man approaching 80 who has been drinking at McHale's since Dwight D. Eisenhower's day.

Fifteen years ago, the management imposed a rule: He could have only six drinks in a year. He takes one for the Tony Awards, another at the New Year, three on certain birthday celebrations and reserves a "floater drink," which he used at the McHale's farewell last week.

Then there was Mr. McHale himself, who plans to lock the door for good today. What would he be taking home to his apartment?

Nothing much, he said. "My apartment is just where I sleep - this is my house."

Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

[londonlawyer]

It's a shame because, with all of the dilapidated buildings on 8th Avenue, this one is quite nice. I hope (but I doubt) that it's a full block development that includes the run-down building just north of the empty lot. Unlike the McHale's building, that piece of crap deserves a date with the wrecking ball.

[Derek2k3]

Originally Posted by sfenn1117

Here comes another boring 40 story residential. I don't know the building you're talking about but it seems like I'd rather have a neighborhood pub than another Staples or Starbucks on the ground floor.

Bingo. I wish they would just buy the air rights and build a taller tower on the adjacent parking lot.


247 West 46th Street
750-754 Eighth Avenue
39 stories 450 feet
Costas Kondylis & Partners, LLP
46th Street Development Corporation
Residential Condominiums
187 units 300,848 Sq. Ft.
Proposed

New Building Permit

[londonlawyer]

Originally Posted by Derek2k3

Bingo. I wish they would just buy the air rights and build a taller tower on the adjacent parking lot.


247 West 46th Street
750-754 Eighth Avenue
39 stories 450 feet
Costas Kondylis & Partners, LLP
46th Street Development Corporation
Residential Condominiums
187 units 300,848 Sq. Ft.
Proposed

New Building Permit

I think that, at the very least, the adjacent lot is part of this project. (I recall reading this from the NY Times' article in Sept.) I genuinely hope that the building north of the lot with the China Club is also part of this project. I wonder how many lots are covered by the address 750-754 Eighth Avenue.

Anyway, losing a nice building like McHale's is a shame. However, losing a nice building while, at the same time, keeping an eyesore is a real kick in the nuts.

[lofter1]

The description of the property on the DOB permit shows that the site is basically two over-lapping squares:

The first is 120' x 175' (the McHale's site and apparently the parking lot with 120' of frontage along 8th Ave.)

The second is 100' x 100' -- it sits to the NE of the above plot and overlaps the McHales site by a 25' square (and apparently fronts onto the south side of 47th St. east of the China Club building).

The China Club building appears NOT to be a part of this site, but the new building will seemingly wrap around it.

From DOB ... (get out your pencils and your graph paper)

Metes and Bounds:

Street Status: PUBLIC - LEGAL WIDTH 60

Beginning at a point on the NORTH side of WEST 46TH STREET EAST of the corner formed by the intersection of WEST 46TH STREET and 8TH AVENUE:
RUNNING THENCE E 125 FT.
THENCE N 100.42 FT.
RUNNING THENCE E 75 FT.
THENCE N 100.42 FT.
RUNNING THENCE W 100 FT.
THENCE S 80.42 FT.
RUNNING THENCE W 100 FT.
THENCE S 120.42 FT.

[londonlawyer]

Thanks for the info, Lofter. Does anyone else think that it sucks to lose a nice building -- let alone on a street with so much crap. Consider that hideous building across the street with the Bennegins and the crappy yellow and orange one with the NY Tours. They should be torn down.

[lofter1]

^ Perhaps this portends what you wish for ...

Hells Kitchen Bennigans lasted 15 months



http://whatisee.org/mt/archives/entries/000883.html

Bennigans opened in September 2004 with a lot of noise.
At the time, I thought it was contributing to the Mallification of Manhattan.
Just over a year later, it seems no one liked it, and it has closed.
No loss for the neighborhood.
There are plenty of better options for both food and drink nearby.

Posted by whatisee | TrackBack

Comments

Houlihan's on 49th and 7th has closed too, so maybe there is still hope.